About
Stephan Rettenberger

Stephan Rettenberger is Vice President Marketing at ADVA Optical Networking. He is responsible for the external marketing and global positioning of the company’s portfolio of innovative Optical+Ethernet transport solutions. He is also charged with strengthening ADVA Optical Networking’s brand and market recognition across the globe.

Service providers all over the world are in the middle of a shift from hardware-centric to software-controlled, service-focused networks. They're chasing substantial and far-reaching benefits such as reduced costs, speedier service rollouts and enhanced flexibility to address emerging needs. Network functions virtualization (NFV) is one of the break-through technologies enabling the transition. NFV enables a dramatic change. Network functionality is virtualized, enabling standard servers and general-purpose storage to operate network appliances, which take the place of dedicated hardware. Consider the cumbersome range of hardware types, functions and variants that are currently required over the lifespan of IT services with a given customer, and the substantial cost, scalability and flexibility benefits are readily apparent. Virtualizing hardware-specific functionality eliminates the need for diverse hardware and allows for an unprecedented degree of service agility. Service providers are (finally) freed to ...

Late June every summer, the optical networking community convenes on the French Riviera to ruminate about hot topics in the field of optical networking at the “WDM and Next-Generation Optical Networking” conference. This year was no different, with Andrew Schmitt, Directing Analyst with Infonetics Research opening and chairing the sessions of the first day. In his introductory talk Andrew showed a slide summarizing the state of 100G solutions as follows: In 2011 network operators had the choice between two vendors for commercial deployment of 100G systems. In 2012 the list has grown substantially by a factor of five – a point rendered un-debatable by the long list of sponsoring vendors showcasing their 100G solutions(s) in the adjacent exhibition area.

Recently I had dinner with the editor of an industry publication for enterprise networking technology. When I asked him what the hot topic for his publication was he simply said "cloud". When I look at the most recent announcements in the carrier and service provider publications, what do I see? Clouds.